Name History

How the company behind Ripple's payment products has been renamed over time, from OpenCoin to Ripple Labs to Ripple.

The company most associated with XRP has changed its name twice since founding, which is a common source of confusion when reading older articles or documents.

OpenCoin (2012–2013)

The company was founded as OpenCoin, Inc. in September 2012 by Chris Larsen together with the XRP Ledger's creators. Under this name, the company's early public messaging focused heavily on the ledger technology itself.

Ripple Labs (2013–2015)

In 2013, OpenCoin renamed itself Ripple Labs, Inc., adopting the "Ripple" name with the blessing of Ryan Fugger, creator of the original 2004 RipplePay concept (see Origins and Founding). This rebrand coincided with a strategic shift toward building commercial payment products — what would become RippleNet — aimed at banks and payment providers, rather than positioning the company primarily as a protocol research outfit.

Ripple (2015–present)

The company shortened its name again to simply Ripple, the name it operates under today. "Ripple" is used to refer to the company in essentially all of its current products, marketing, and legal filings (including the SEC litigation, formally SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc., which still uses the "Ripple Labs" corporate name in the caption).

A separate legal entity: XRP II, LLC

Ripple also operates a subsidiary called XRP II, LLC, which was specifically involved in some of the sales activity examined in the SEC case. Its existence is one more reason the "Ripple" name can refer to slightly different legal entities depending on context — see SEC v. Ripple Overview for how this distinction mattered in the litigation.